In Nokomis neighborhood, paths cross at 'the Pantry'

At a store off Colonia Lane, one-stop shopping and stories of how things used to be

By THOMAS BECNEL

Just about every day, Raymond Kozlowski rides his battered old bike to Sam's American Pantry.

He buys cheap cigars — grape cigarillos, actually — counting out exact change on the counter. He picks up a newspaper or a lottery ticket. And he chats with anyone and everyone he sees at the neighborhood market.

“When we were kids, we'd hang out here,” says Koslowski, 47. “Back then, I think it was a Shop 'N Go, or a Farm Store, maybe even a Little General. Now we all just call it the Pantry.”

The old neighborhood off Colonia Lane has seen better days. Crime and drug dealing are common among the rental houses and mobile homes. When residents hear a helicopter, they assume it's a police chase.

The American flag flies in some yards, the Confederate flag in others. Lots of “No Trespassing” and “Beware of Dog” signs. A piece of cardboard tacked to a utility pole offers “Fridge. Ice cold. $50.”

Kozlowksi, a former electrician, gets by on food stamps and disability payments. He lifts his shirt to reveal the long surgical scar down his spine. He has no car or phone, but manages to rent an old single-wide trailer.

“This isn't the great side of Nokomis,” he says, laughing. “We're more redneck-y down here on the corner. All kinds of stuff happens here, but some nights are so quiet you can hear the frogs chirp. It's like a cash-flow issue. If people are making it, they're spending it.”

Meeting place

Sarah Woods says Kozlowski is wrong. The Pantry used to be a 7-Eleven convenience store. She knows that because she used to work there.

Now she's a cook at the Laurel Nokomis School, though she still lives in east Nokomis.

“I usually come here for cigarettes,” says Woods, 43, stepping out of her pickup truck in the parking lot. “Today it's milk, bread and a 12-pack of Pepsi.”

Meeting Woods at the store is her mother, Carolyn Davis, who's dropping off her granddaughter.

She remembers when the trailers were part of a snowbird community called “Mobile City.” Then it became a quiet place for young families. Children would play in the woods that are now golf courses.

“This neighborhood was developed for working people, so they could put in a trailer and raise their kids,” Davis says. “It didn't get bad until you started having the drugs. Maybe 15 years ago.”

Indian-American

Several years ago, after the 7-Eleven went out of business, John Rys opened the American Pantry. He was a fixture at the store.

Everyone called him “Fat John.”

Last year, Rys sold the convenience store to Gary Patel, an Indian businessman who runs a gas station on the island of Venice. He renamed the Nokomis store Sam's American Pantry.

“Sam,” he explains, is short for a long Indian name. He borrows a pen to spell out “Atharshyum.”

Patel has a sense of humor — he jokes that the stray cats he feeds are “security” — but it can be difficult to understand his heavily accented English. He has to repeat himself to his customers and they have to repeat themselves to him. Most conversations end with wrinkled dollar bills crossing the store counter.

Besides the usual beer, chips and candy, the American Pantry sells boiled peanuts, pickled eggs and packaged sandwiches. Also bottles of MD 20/20 and Wild Irish Rose. Sometimes customers are drunk, voices are raised and things get tense.

Kozlowski, as always, has something to say about ethnic tension, Nokomis customers and the relative American-ness of Sam's American Pantry.

“It might have been a problem when they first came here,” he says. “Let's put it this way: They haven't burned the store down, so I guess things are doing OK.”

Biking for beer

Colonia Lane has been beautified in recent years. Street corners have old-fashioned streetlights and red brick crosswalks. It doesn't seem to have changed much.

The old joke about the town — “No Shirt, No Shoes, Nokomis” — holds true at the Pantry.

In the heat of the day, especially, half of the men who stop at the store seem to be shirtless. The older ones have tanned bellies. The younger ones have tattooed arms and shoulders.

Many are skilled at pedaling a bicycle with a 6-pack or even a case of beer balanced on the handlebars.

Kozlowski does wear a shirt, along with shorts, sunglasses and a camouflage hat, but he pedals his bike with bare feet.

“It's hot,” he says with a shrug. “Why wear shoes, you know?”

Young and old

Kids ride their bikes to the Pantry, too.

“They have my favorite Fantas,” says 13-year-old Noah Deeds. “Twenty ounces for $1.07. And they have a quarter machine that I like to play.”

Noah stands in the parking lot with a brush cut of bright red hair. He wears sneakers, shorts and an old “Beavis and Butt-Head” T-shirt. After paying $1 in quarters to inflate the tires on his bike, he waves and pedals back down Colonia Lane.

Next up is Harold Butts, 66, a retired welder from Connecticut.

Every few weeks, he drives his truck to the Pantry. He refills five-gallon Glacier water bottles from a machine outside. He pays with the quarters that he saves and stores in a empty pill bottle.

Butts has been going to the neighborhood store since he moved to Nokomis around 1973.

“That was years ago,” he groans, easing a heavy bottle into the bed of his pickup. “You know, this used to be a 7-Eleven.”

Nursery neighbor

Across the street from the Pantry is a small sign — Nick's Nursery — and a thick wall of lush plants and flowering shrubs. Sea grape and bougainvillea help fill the space beneath palms and oaks, pines and magnolias.

Tucked in the shade are pools, paths and a ranch-style home with wagon wheels decorating the front porch.

Joanne and Nick Coleman opened the nursery in 1960 and still live off Colonia Lane. Their son, also named Nick, grew up in the neighborhood and became head football coach at Venice High School.

The family home was part of a subdivision tract called Hermosa Heights. Any glamour it once had has faded with the decline of East Nokomis. Joanne thinks that's too bad. She no longer visits much of the neighborhood or shops across the street.

“It's not the same store,” she says. “It's just not the same.”

Nokomis character

When it comes to the Pantry, Kozlowski gets the first word, the last word, and most of the words in between.

He jokes with clerks in the store. He talks with delivery men at the door. He chats with neighbors in the parking lot.

He's a character and a storyteller who knows he's a character and a storyteller.

Start with his nickname. People call him “Flaming Raymond.” It's not what you think, he cautions, because he happens to be good with the ladies.

“I'm not flamboyant; I'm charismatic,” Kozlowski says with a grin. “There's a difference."

He used to share a house with a girlfriend, but that relationship ended and he found himself in East Nokomis trailer. He shrugs. Being poor doesn't mean you have to be sad.

Kozlowski visits his sister, who works at Publix. And he stops by the Pantry, where people are always coming and going.

“I remember once, years ago,” he says, “this guy crashed his car right through the wall there. I kid you not.”

The neighborhood has had its problems, but Kozlowski says he makes the best of it.

“Other than the crazy people,” he says, laughing, “it's all right.”

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